As our cruise ship headed across the North Sea to Greenland, we stopped at Isfajordur, an outpost at the northwest tip of Iceland, on August 12, 2025.
Isfajordur is perched on the edge of the mountainous coast. It is a small, European fishing town.
We traveled by small boat half an hour up the fjord near Isfajordur to Vigur, also known as "Bird Island". Vigur is owned by a former Antarctic explorer who saw that an entire island was for sale and snapped it up.
Our island guide told us that Vigur makes its money from harvesting eiderdown. Eiderdown is the light, insulating feathers from eider ducks who frequent the island. In the fall, workers trek across the island, collecting the feather nests built by the ducks for their chicks during the summer. If the chicks are still in the nests, the workers substitute nests of leaves and grasses, and the ducks often cover those nests with feathers all over again.
Our guide took us into the shed where the eiderdown is processed.
A comforter made of premium eiderdown sells for $3000 to $4000 in Europe and up to $18,000 in Japan!
The eiderdown must be cleaned before being packed and exported.
Our guide also led us along a boardwalk, next to which hundreds, or even thousands, of birds nested during the summer.
Already, in mid-August, it was fall on Vigur. Most of the birds had flown south for the winter. We did see many terns, as well as one lone puffin. During our trip to Iceland three years ago, we had searched in vain for puffins. We were thrilled to see this one.
We returned to the Vigur cafe for a slice of a rhubarb orange tart, known as "happy marriage cake".
All over Scandinavia, white lace is the decoration for curtains and, in this restaurant, for table runners.
We studied a map of Iceland on the wall, which showed Vigur as a small island in the fjord beyond Isafjordur.
An elderly woman approached us, to talk about Vigur. She was the mother of the owner, the Antarctic explorer. When I asked if I could take her picture, she said, "Why? I'm not the explorer."
We walked about tiny Vigur, as we waited for our boat back to Isfajordur to arrive. On this rainy day, the views were beautiful, in a melancholy way.
We walked to a windmill and could see seals resting on rocks offshore.
Finally, it was time to travel back to Isfajordur and take a tender back to our ship, the Sirena, waiting offshore.
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